There are leaks... and then there are leaks

Glenn Greenwald has a great follow up on my last post about selective punishment when it comes to leaks. His point is that the distinction has nothing to do with national security and everything to do with political damage control.

The CIA's firing of the official who allegedly leaked the existence of Eastern European black prisons to Dana Priest of The Washington Post has prompted an orgy of celebration among Bush followers, who apparently believe that the dreams they harbor -- whereby anyone who discloses information which results in political harm to the leader will be imprisoned -- are about to be realized.

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If we had the society which Bush followers are seeking to impose -- where anyone is imprisoned who discloses, or writes about, any information marked "classified" by the government -- Watergate misconduct would never have been exposed. We would not know that the administration was eavesdropping on us without warrants in violation of the law. We would not know that our government systematically used torture as a routine interrogation device nor that it disappeared terrorist suspects to black prisons. And we would not have learned of the substantial doubts which existed, and the evidence bolstering those doubts, regarding Saddam's weapons capability prior to our invasion. Nor, for that matter, would we have recently learned about the administration's apparently advanced plans to wage war on Iran.

These types of unauthorized disclosures, more than anything else, are what accounts for the fact that Americans finally realized what type of government we really have, and caused literally millions of Americans to abandon this President and his administration. Is it really any wonder why the president's followers are so eager to imprison the people responsible for these types of leaks, while insistently ignoring the leaks designed to help the president? This has nothing to do with national security or with safeguarding classified information. It is about punishment, vengeance, and deterrence -- all focused on those who have exposed, or who could expose, government misconduct that results in political harm to George Bush.